Study: Don't Bombard Customers with Marketing Phone Calls and Emails

 

Businesses seeking to reach out to customers and potential clients should go easy on the phone and email contacts and use more "snail mail," according to a new marketing study.

Postal mail contacts to pitch products or services seem to be preferred over phone calls and email, which can be more intrusive and annoying to customers, says a new study co-authored by Andrea Godfrey, an assistant professor of marketing at UC Riverside.

The study found that three phone calls along with three or four emails and nine or 10 postal mailings over a three-month period is the ideal mix to stir customer interest. Any more contact is a turn-off that irritates customers, according to the study entitled, "Enough is Enough.! The Fine Line in Executing Multichannel Relational Communication."

Godfrey hypothesized that mail was preferrable because people can read it if and when they want, and they are not interrupted the way a phone call can cause someone to stop what he or she is doing. Email also is less intrusive than phone calls. This is something businesses may want to consider when devising a marketing strategy.